Visual art is the 'art' in language arts. Adults and children alike can better understand reading and writing by combining it with art and craft approaches. Read Connecting Art to Language Arts blog for new and fun ideas on how to grow your creative connection to language!

Friday, January 6, 2017

Drawing Stick Figures - How Am I Made?

Drawing Stick Figures — How Am I Made?

In our last
post we talked about basic proportions when drawing a stick figure, and I
promised to offer some tips for making your stick figures more expressive.

Tip #1: Add two horizontal lines, one for the shoulders and one for the hips.
If you think about how we are made, you quickly realize that the ‘hangman’
stick figure has a couple basic problems: our arms don’t spring out of our
necks, and our legs don’t’ come together in an upside down ‘V.’

Instead we
have shoulders and hips, so let’s add a simplified version of shoulders and
hips to our stick figures. First imagine yourself standing straight up. Now
picture a line from the tip of one shoulder to the tip of the other shoulder.
Notice that your arms are attached to your body at either end of this line.
Likewise, picture a line that runs from the tip of one hip bone to the tip of
the other. Your legs extend straight down from the ends of this line.

Now add
these two horizontal lines to your stick figure and attach the arms and legs to
the ends of the appropriate line. Voila! With just these two new lines, your
stick figure is a closer representation of you!

Tip #2: Notice the major points where we
bend and move (our joints). Our stick figure is only a few simple lines (one
for the neck and body, one for each arm, one for each leg, and now we have
included the connector lines for the shoulders and hips). If we take the time
to think about where these simple lines bend (shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips,
knees, and ankles), then our stick figures are ready for action!

In the next
post we’ll talk about how to make our stick figures move at our command.

Blog Archive

About Us

Tracy and Claire are artists.

Tracy is a children's book author and illustrator, working in watercolor and Adobe Illustrator. She loves exploring new ways to express her art and storytelling and is always finding new inspiration around her.

Claire is a writer and teacher, and she obsesses over all things associated with the written word, from poems and essays to novels and catchphrases. She is a graphic storyteller and loves the magic of combining words and pictures.